Mental health services would be a top priority, declared Nick Clegg yesterday to a party whose electoral health should realistically have them in intensive care by now.

Instead, his audience continued their determined cheeriness, proudly telling each other that giving their own leadership a bloody nose over airport policy the day before offered proof they were still a living, breathing, proper party.

Perhaps it was the novelty of spending so many days in rooms full of LibDems this past week that helped maintain their insouciant air; or perhaps the relief of knowing they would be safely out of the Glasgow spotlight when the Clacton result comes through. In any event, they dutifully applauded the man romanced into coalition in the Rose Garden four years ago, and now berating his political lover over policy infidelities.

The odd couple seem destined for yet more disharmony the nearer the UK election looms. And, as he never tires of telling the shrinking faithful, he took the party and its senior colleagues into government after several lifetimes on the sidelines. Yesterday, despite an animated performance insisting his team had applied the brakes to the Tories rightwards dash, you had to wonder if the game has been worth the candle. His party languishes in the polls at less than half the standing of the UKippers, despite Mr Farage's policy cupboard making old Mother Hubbard seem like a profligate shopper.

Meanwhile, Mr Clegg apparently stands lower in public esteem than any predecessor, with just 20 per cent of the electorate rating him as a leader and 17 per cent considering him good in a crisis. He will have to hope they are wrong in spades about the latter since a crisis, with the election a bare seven months distant, is already threatening his party, some of whom will go home to prepare for annihilation.

Inevitably there has been renewed muttering about the quality of the Clegg leadership, badly holed not far above the waterline by the tuition fees debacle. Yet the fixation about party leaderships seems to me to say more about the immaturity of the UK electorate , and some of the media, than it does about how to do 21st century politics.

Throughout the UK conference season a massive spotlight is shone on the leader's speech. Ed Miliband, serially lampooned for his selective amnesia, proved that fixating on style over content is a high wire act from which it's all too easy to plunge. David Cameron proved you can apparently sell the unsaleable (unfunded tax cuts two days after his Chancellor said we were broke) provided you add Old Etonian chutzpah and some half decent jokes. And Nigel Farage proved you can be a joke and still laugh a worrying percentage of the population into the polling booth on your behalf. His speeches defy rational analysis, but since he likes a pint, smokes like a chimney and has made a personal fortune from the European Parliament he derides, he's obviously just the chap to run the economy.

Mr Clegg was the only mainstream party leader to agree to debate with the Nigelator and much good it did him. But as the UK election campaigns begin in earnest, stand by for more hoohah about cast lists, timings and forensic post mortems over fresh televised confrontations. What we will learn from these debates in terms of competence to govern is virtually nil. We will find out who can tell a gag, and to whom the TV cameras are kindest. We will find out what we knew: that Mr Miliband is a decent enough chap who was shortchanged when the charisma pills came round, that Mr Cameron has a shameless capacity to turn commitments on their head (compassionate Conservatism anyone?) and that Mr Clegg is the best looking loser on offer.

Whether the new leader of the SNP will be considered to have enough new clout in terms of membership to be part of the package we know not as yet. But it would be welcome change from another line-up of men in suits.

All of these setpiece formats underline the dismal journey we've made towards a presidential style of politics ill suited to the challenges of modern-day governance. Margaret Thatcher, as a range of handbagged ministers have testified in memoirs, increasingly behaved like an irascible potentate, brooking no opposition and seeking little advice.

Tony Blair, her political heir, embraced the model, substituting sofa-based government for collective cabinet decision making. The Cabinet Office became, de facto, the Prime Minister's office with the rules of engagement with the civil service altered, not least in giving his press secretary Alastair Campbell and chief of staff Jonathan Powell legal authority to instruct them.

It's salutatory, and alarming, to remember that almost 800 staff were deployed to work for the Blair Prime Ministerial team, in his own office and the cabinet one. How much simpler to tinker with ministerial budgets and pre-empt their decisions when you are spared the tedium of consulting them. That location of absolute power in few hands took us into illegal wars destined to frame his legacy.

Gordon Brown's promise to de-Stalinise the PM's domain seems to have been shortlived given he took over the premises at number 12 to create his own war room with key aides and staffers surrounding his own desk.

It was always said of the incoming Mr Cameron that he would take the very un-Blairite route of giving his ministers freedom to innovate and legislate, but that too fell victim to the law of various unintended consequences and gradually power devolved on the famous quartet of George Osborne and his deputy Danny Alexander, alongside Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg.

You might say: so what? Why not go for powerful presidencies? Why not emulate the US? (Though at least there are many checks and balances on a White House resident always needing Congress on board.)

We apparently still yearn for the smack of firm leadership, quite forgetting how destructive that can be. And quite forgetting that those whose terms of office continue to be revered would hardly have survived in the modern age viz Winston Churchill - acclaimed war leader, depressive, and heroic imbiber.

Ten years ago, 139 leading academics were asked to name the best Prime Minister of the 20th century. The winner? Clement Atlee. No presence, no charisma, no facility with the media. But a self-deprecating demeanour which masked considerable knowledge, an ability to work with committees and teams and a pragmatist who thought of himself as his party's representative rather than a noisy one-man band.

Which, inevitably, brings me to Bullingdon Boris, much tipped to succeed Dave. Don't worry, one Tory guru told me last weekend, he will just be a Chief Operating Officer in a broadly-based executive team. Boris as the new Clem? That's quite a leap of imagination.